As The Summer Burns – Sounds of the Underground is a true fans festival.

by Jeff Brinn / Schwegweb.com

With summer officially just around the corner music fans across our mighty country will bore witness to one of the most furious traveling packages ever assembled to date. Where Europe has always seemed to be well educated in giving fans historical festival style shows with little conscious effort the U.S. has just never seemed to be able to pull it off with as much sincere honesty. Well maybe now with the creation of the Sounds of the Underground tour this just might be what brings real underground music to the next level in the United States. A real meat and potatoes style festival that fans so rightly have deserved is what this festival is hoping to accomplish and it looks like it might just have a damn good chance. This ominous traveling musical circus features some of metal and hard core’s most elite and well respected acts with out a doubt. Not only is the mighty Lamb of God grabbing the reigns as headliner across the states they will be joined as well by a slew of other killer bands including Clutch, Opeth, Gwar, High on Fire, Poison the Well, From Autumn To Ashes, Strapping Young Lad, Chimaria, Devil Driver, and Unearth to name but just a few. Now if that ain’t enough to please even the most fickle underground fan what actually possibly could.

Where other touring festival style packages seem to be corporate business ventures only concentrating on capitalizing on the thin pockets of the youth of America Sounds of the Underground seems very different in their purpose. They honestly seem willing to give kids a much more bang for their buck. Low ticket costs as well as low priced merchandise have been one obvious attempt to present this tour as a show created honestly for the fans and this really seems to be perfect timing. We can only hope that with these lower priced incentives that the $10.00 pizza slices, $5.00 waters, and $7.00 beers will as well be more price friendly then many other popular tours that seem to only care about sucking your wallets dry.

“It’s a great tour….we’re very proud of how it came together” Mark Morton of Lamb of God proudly states. Lamb of God are no strangers to the touring trenches by any means. After appearances on such prestige’s tours as Ozzfest, Slipknot and numerous other traveling battle fronts who better to give us a little insight on to what can be expected then one of the new leaders of the metal front. Lamb of God’ s Mark Morton further assures us “ The lineup is incredibly diverse and really features some of the best hard core and heavy metal acts around. I think it will provide a pretty killer alternative to some of the more corporate festivals you’re used to seeing. With lower ticket prices and lower merchandise it’s a fan friendly festival.”

When asked about what this tour will offer fans and how important is it for this tour to be a success Opeth vocalists/guitarists Mikael Akerfeldt states “I guess a decent mix of some new metal bands of today…..For us it’s not so important. Obviously we wanna gain some new fans, have a blast and play to 1000’s of people. Still we have our fans regardless of the out come of this tour.” When asked if he felt proud to be a part of this tour Mikael states kindly “Proud is probably not the word, I’m intrigued to be a part of it as I think we are the most Off the wall band on the bill. It’s going to be cool to win a few fans over.”

Vagrant Records own From Autumn To Ashes Guitarist, Jonathan Cox, sees things a little bit different when it comes to the question of being proud to be apart of the tour. Jonathan excitedly states “Of course, to be on the same bill as Lamb of God, Gwar and Clutch, that is an honor”. When it comes to what the Sounds of the Underground tour has to offer for the fans, Jonathan adds, “It offers them a chance to see the heaviest bands in the world. I look at it as the heavy metal version of The Warped Tour. Like I said, it’s all about heavy music and the scene needs something like this right now. Kids need to see these bands, they are the future of heavy music.”

As the first kick off date quickly rears its ugly head the Sounds of the Underground festival tour actually seems like it may work. Only time will quickly tell but if the bands can all pull together along with the promoters this should be one hell of a festival. So by all means get your crusty little fingers on tickets to what will easily be a summer tour to remember.

For more info goto www.soundsoftheundergroundtour.com

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